The Dead of Atlantis
by Jenwryn
Summary: From the eyes of my OC Meaghan Monahan, this oneshot looks at a very unpleasant side of life in Atlantis: death. Sort of a prequel, albeit of a VERY different tone, to "A Question Of Coffee". Part of my MegAU, obviously. Edited July 2008.


* * *

_A/N: I own nothing in the SGA universe, except for Doctor Monahan. _

* * *

**The Dead of Atlantis  
**

* * *

Doctor Meaghan Monahan stood outside the mortuary and tried not to look sour. It seemed wrong, somehow, to look sour. After all, as miserable as she might be, she had to be better off than those poor bastards. She forced her eyes to focus on the three bodies, washed and naked and laid out ready on their plain metal tables, separated from her by a wall of glass. She wondered which unfortunate person had done the prep. At least, bare and blank-faced, she could almost pretend that they weren't everyday people who had been eating in the mess hall just the day before. Whoever had done the undressing hadn't had even that option.

Meaghan turned, glanced at the MD who would be assisting her, and forced a smile. 'I'm not sure the promotion and my own lab are worth this. Somebody must be glad I turned up and put them out of a job.' She'd been working in the mortuary for a month or so now, but it hadn't improved with practice. Not that she was the only forensics person in the city; there were proper pathologists – but whenever they were ill, or off-world, the unpleasant duty fell to her.

The MD chuckled, apparently not as bothered by the corpses as Meaghan was, and helped her into her long gown. She had never understood why they made them that colour. Personally, she'd have picked something that didn't show the stains so much. She pulled on her mask, switched on a ventilator, and wriggled her fingers into gloves even as she opened the door with an elbow and entered the glass-encased room. The door slid back behind her with a hum and a sort of little sucking noise. The containment options had been why this room had been chosen back when Atlantis had first been 'settled' by the expedition. Someone had told her, once, what the Lantean purpose for the room had been, but she'd forgotten it. Now it was nothing more and nothing less than the last place where the dead of Atlantis would rest before they were sent back home through the stargate, to family and friends who would, on the whole, never know the truth of how and where – and why – their loved ones died.

The government, on the other hand, would know. People tended to forget that it was protocol that all bodies be examined. It was as though they connected the forensic process with crime shows and police investigations, and nothing more. Meaghan could well imagine what pragmatic Colonel Sheppard would say if _he_ were the one looking at the three bodies laid out on display. She just knew that he would run his hand uncomfortably through his hair and then say in a laconic voice, like it didn't bother him, 'Well, you don't need a degree to see what _they_ died from.' And he would have been right, too. The projectile wounds – some kind of bullet – were as clear as day and rather unpleasant to look at.

The young woman went and stood by the side of the first body, choosing the one man amongst the three whom she had never spoken to, and couldn't remember ever seeing. He had lain in the same position for quite a while, but they must have brought him in when he was still warm: all his blood had run down to where his flesh met the unforgiving table, and it had turned the underside of his body a ghastly dark colour.

Meaghan had been trained as a forensic anthropologist as part of her palaeoanthropology studies. She'd even done some prac during her doctorate. But at the heart of everything she had studied – despite learning the _theory_ of pathology – remained the premise that all she would ever see were bones. A pathologist got the bodies that still looked like people, but a forensic anthropologist wasn't supposed so see hide nor hair of them (literally) until they were nothing but bones. She didn't mind bones. She had picked her field for a reason, to separate herself from the recently dead and, furthermore, had imagined that all of the bodies she would ever deal with would be many hundreds of years old, if not thousands. She had never dreamt that she would be doing autopsies. Living in Atlantis had strange consequences. It might not have been exactly her field, but her background made her technically more qualified than a doctor. And the protocol was clear―

Doctor Meaghan Monahan bit her lip, before bending her head briefly over the dead of Atlantis, an unspoken not-prayer whispering through her mind.

Then she made the first cut.


End file.
